Too much information. Way tooooo much information.
Now that the New Republic is in the interregnum between its sale and its final takeover by the new owner, ultra liberal banking heir Winthrop McCormack, and incoming publisher, blueblood bolshevik Hamilton Fish V (not to be confused with the third or fourth), I guess the staff feels free for awhile to tread where none dare go before. And where the New Republic senior editor Jeet Heer went is just under the presidential zipper to the private parts. The supposed reasoning for this is to promote the candidacy of Hillary Clinton. See, by making us so disgusted by the discussion of presidential private parts, Heer hopes the public resolves this by electing someone without said parts, namely Hillary. The following is not for the squeamish but even if you do have a strong stomach I assure that you will still be completely grossed out by Heer's obsession:
Every American president has had a penis. The possession of a generative member is, in fact, the one trait they all share. Some have been Whigs, some Democrats, and some Republicans. There have been slave-owning presidents and abolitionists, bearded presidents and clean-shaven ones, Easterners and Southerners. Almost all have been white, but at least one has been black. Yet all have been men.
With the prospect of Hillary Clinton becoming the first penis-free president, it’s not surprising that her Republican rivals want to remind the world that their genital anatomy is the traditional norm.
Heer takes us on a brief tour of presidential private parts before going all the way with LBJ.
Lyndon Johnson was always eager to let those around him know that he had an unusually large penis. Reviewing a biography of Johnson in the New York Review of Books, historian Marshall Frady noted:
Okay, remember my warning about being grossed out? We are about to go into gross-out hyper drive so don't say I didn't warn you:
He early became fabled for a Rabelaisian earthiness, urinating in the parking lot of the House Office Building as the urge took him; if a colleague came into a Capitol bathroom as he was finishing at the urinal there, he would sometimes swing around still holding his member, which he liked to call “Jumbo,” hooting once, “Have you ever seen anything as big as this?,” and shaking it in almost a brandishing manner as he began discoursing about some pending legislation. At the same time, he would oblige aides to take dictation standing in the door of his office bathroom while he went about emptying his bowels, as if in some alpha-male ritual assertion of his primacy. Even on the floors of the House and Senate, he would extravagantly rummage away at his groin, sometimes reaching his hand through a pocket and leaning with half-lifted leg for more thorough access.
Just when you think it couldn't get any worse, Heer shifts to the subject of Bill Clinton:
Thanks to various sex scandals, we have detailed descriptions of Bill Clinton’s penis. According to Robert Bennet, Clinton’s lawyer in the Paula Jones case, “In terms of size, shape, direction, whatever the devious mind wants to concoct, the president is a normal man. There are no blemishes, there are no moles, there are no growths.” The Independent offered a more prosaic account: “His erect penis is about five inches long, has the circumference of a quarter ... and heads off at an angle, presumably rather like a finger bent at the joint.”
If you are now as grossed out as Jeet Heer obviously hopes you are, he offers a solution:
The only way to stop American presidents from alluding to their penises is to elect a woman, which is likely to happen in November.
Okay, Jeet, but here's the problem. With Hillary also comes Bill and we are back to a certain five inch long private part with the circumference of a quarter. There is just no way to avoid it. Also with Hillary comes the husband of her very close aide, Huma Abedin...Carlos Danger aka Anthony Weiner. And if your mind isn't already back on the topic of private parts again, he will be sure to tweet it to you.
